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Frank Boreham was a pastor in New Zealand and Australia in the late 1800s and early 1900s. One Sunday evening, he began a series of sermons entitled, “Texts That Made History.” He began that first Sunday with “Martin Luther’s Text,” and continued the series for 125 Sundays!

This article deals with Hugh Latimer’s text. Latimer was one of the men who led the English Reformation under Edward VI. During the reign of Queen Mary (known as “bloody Mary” for her persecution of Protestants during her reign), Latimer was one of nearly 300 martyred for his stand for the truth being taught during the Reformation.

1 Timothy 1:15

I

There is excitement in the streets of London! Who is this upon whom the crowd is pressing as he passes down the Strand? Women throw open the windows and gaze admiringly out; shopkeepers rush from behind their counters to join the throng as it approaches; apprentices fling aside their tools and, from every lane and alley, pour into the street; waggoners rein in their horses and leave them for a moment unattended; the taverns empty as the pro-cession draws near them! Everybody is anxious to catch a glimpse of this man’s face; to hear, if possible, the sound of his voice; or, better still, to clasp his hand as he passes.

For this is Hugh Latimer; the terror of evil-doers; the idol of the common people; and, to use the phraseology of a chronicler of the period, “the honestest man in England.” By sheer force of character he has raised himself from a ploughman’s cottage to a bishop’s palace–an achievement that, in the sixteenth century, stands without precedent or parallel. “My father was a yeoman,” he says, in the course of a sermon preached before the King, “my father was a yeoman, and had no lands of his own; he had a farm of three or four pounds a year at the utmost, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half-a-dozen men. He had walk for a hundred sheep; and my mother milked thirty kine. He kept me at school, or else I had not been able to have preached before the King’s majesty now.” Nor has his elevation spoiled him. He has borne with him in his exaltations the spirit of the common people. He feels as they feel; he thinks as they think; he even speaks as they speak. It was said of him, as of his Master, that the common people heard him gladly. In cathedral pulpits and royal chapels he speaks a dialect that the common people can readily understand; he uses homely illustrations gathered from the farm, the kitchen and the counting-house; he studiously eschews the pedantries of the schoolmen and the subtleties of the theologians.

His sermons are, as Macaulay says, “the plain talk of a plain man, who sprang from the body of the people, who sympathized strongly with their wants and their feelings, and who boldly uttered their opinions.” It was on account of the fearless way in which stout-hearted old Hugh exposed the misdeeds of men in ermine tippets and gold collars that the Londoners cheered him as he walked down the Strand to preach at Whitehall, struggled for a touch of his gown, and bawled, “Have at them, Father Latimer!” There he goes, then; a man of sound sense, honest affection, earnest purpose and sturdy speech; a man whose pale face, stooping figure and emaciated frame show that it has cost him something to struggle upwards from the ploughshare to the palace; a man who looks for all the world like some old Hebrew prophet transplanted incongruously into the prosaic life of London! He passes down the Strand with the people surging fondly around him. He loves the people, and is pleased with their confidence in him. His heart is simple enough and human enough to find the sweetest of all music in the plaudits that are ringing in his ears. So much for London; we must go to Oxford!

II

There is excitement in the streets of Oxford! Who is this upon whom the crowd is pressing as he passes down from the Mayor’s house to the open ground in front of Balliol College? Again, women are leaning out of the windows; shopkeepers are forsaking their counters; apprentices are throwing aside their tools; and drivers are deserting their horses that they may stare at him. It is Hugh Latimer again! He is a little thinner than when we saw him in London; for he has exchanged a palace for a prison. The people still press upon him and make progress difficult; but this time they crowd around him that they may curse him!

It is the old story of “Hosanna!” one day and “Away with Him! Crucify Him!” the next. The multitude is a fickle master. Since we saw him in the Strand, the crown has passed from one head to another; the court has changed its ways to gratify the whims of its new mistress; the Government has swung round to match the moods of the court; and the people, like sheep, have followed their leaders. They are prepared now to crown the men whom before they would have crucified, and to crucify the men whom they would then have crowned. But Hugh Latimer and his companion–for this time he is not alone–are not of the same accommodating temper. Hugh Latimer is still “the honestest man in England!” His conscience is still his only monitor; his tongue is still free; his soul is not for sale! And so:

In Oxford town the faggots they piled,

With furious haste and with curses wild,

Round two brave men of our British breed,

Who dared to stand true to their speech and deed;

Round two brave men of that sturdy race,

Who with tremorless souls the worst can face;

Round two brave souls who could keep their tryst

Through a pathway of fire to follow Christ.

And the flames leaped up, but the blinding smoke

Could not the soul of Hugh Latimer choke;

For, said he, “Brother Ridley, be of good cheer,

A candle in England is lighted here,

Which by grace of God shall never go out!”–

And that speech in whispers was echoed about–

Latimer’s Light shall never go out,

However the winds may blow it about

Latimer’s Light has come to stay

Till the trump of a coming judgment day.

“Bishop Ridley,” so runs the record, “first entered the lists, dressed in his Episcopal habit; and, soon after, Bishop Latimer, dressed, as usual, in his prison garb. Master Latimer now suffered the keeper to pull off his prison-garb and then he appeared in his shroud. Being ready, he fervently recommended his soul to God, and then he delivered himself to the executioner, saying to the Bishop of London these prophetical words: ‘We shall this day, my lord, light such a candle in England as shall never be extinguished!’”

But it is time that we went back forty years or so, to a time long before either of the processions that we have just witnessed took place. We must ascertain at what flame the light that kindled that candle was itself ignited.

III

Very early in the sixteenth century, England was visited by one of the greatest scholars of the Renaissance, Desiderius Erasmus. After being welcomed with open arms at the Universities, he returned to the Continent and engrossed himself in his learned researches. At Cambridge, however, he had made a profound and indelible impression on at least one of the scholars. Thomas Bilney, familiarly known as “Little Bilney,” was feeling, in a vague and indefinite way, the emptiness of the religion that he had been taught. He felt that Erasmus possessed a secret that was hidden from English eyes, and he vowed that, whatever it might cost him, he would purchase every line that came from the great master’s pen.

In France, Erasmus translated the New Testament into Latin. The ingenuity and industry of Bilney soon secured for him a copy of the book. As to its effect upon him, he shall speak for himself. “My soul was sick,” he says, “and I longed for peace, but nowhere could I find it. I went to the priests, and they appointed me penances and pilgrimages; yet, by these things my poor sick soul was nothing profited. But at last I heard of Jesus. It was then, when first the New Testament was set forth by Erasmus, that the light came. I bought the book, being drawn thereto rather by the Latin than by the Word of God, for at that time I knew not what the Word of God meant. And, on the first reading of it, as I well remember, I chanced upon these words, This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. That one sentence, through God’s inward working, did so lift up my poor bruised spirit that the very bones within me leaped for joy and gladness. It was as if, after a long, dark night, day had suddenly broke!” But what has all this to do with Hugh Latimer?

IV

In those days Latimer was preaching at Cambridge, and all who heard him fell under the spell of his transparent honesty and rugged eloquence. Latimer was then the sturdy champion of the old religion and the uncompromising foe of all who were endeavoring to introduce the new learning. Of all the friars, he was the most punctilious, the most zealous, the most devoted. Bilney went to hear him and fell in love with him at once. He saw that the preacher was mistaken; that his eyes had not been opened to the sublimities that had flooded his own soul with gladness; but he recognized his sincerity, his earnestness and his resistless power; and he longed to be the instrument of his illumination. If only he could do for Latimer what Aquila and Priscilla did for Apollos, and expound unto him the way of God more perfectly! It became the dream and desire of Bilney’s life. “0 God,” he cried, “I am but ‘Little Bilney,’ and shall never do any great thing for Thee; but give me the soul of that man, Hugh Latimer, and what wonders he shall do in Thy most holy Name!”

Where there’s a will there’s a way! One day, as Latimer descends from the pulpit, he passes so close to Bilney that his robes almost brush the student’s face. Like a flash, a sudden inspiration leaps to Bilney’s mind. “Pray thee, Father Latimer,” he whispers, “may I confess my soul to thee?” The preacher beckons, and, into the quiet room adjoining, the student follows. Of all the strange stories that heartbroken penitents have poured into the ears of Father-Confessors since first the confessional was established, that was the strangest! Bilney falls on his knees at Latimer’s feet and allows his soul, pent up for so long, to utter itself freely at last. He tells of the aching hunger of his heart; he tells of the visit of Erasmus; he tells of the purchase of the book; and then he tells of the text. “There it stood,” he says, the tears standing in his eyes, “the very word I wanted. It seemed to be written in letters of light: This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” “0 Father Latimer,” he cries, the passion of his fervor increasing as the memory of his own experience rushes back upon him, “I went to the priests and they pointed me to broken cisterns that held no water and only mocked my thirst! I bore the load of my sins until my soul was crushed beneath the burden! And then I saw that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief; and now, being justified by faith, I have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ!”

Latimer is taken by storm. He is completely overwhelmed. He, too, knows the aching dissatisfaction that Bilney has described. He has experienced for years the same insatiable hunger, the same devouring thirst. To the astonishment of Bilney, Latimer rises and then kneels beside him. The Father-Confessor seeks guidance from his penitent! Bilney draws from his pocket the sacred volume that has brought such comfort and such rapture to his own soul. It falls open at the passage Bilney has read to himself over and over and over again: This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. The light that never was on the sea or shore illumines the soul of Hugh Latimer, and Bilney sees that the passionate desire of his heart has been granted him. And from that hour, Bilney and Latimer lived only that they might unfold to all kinds and conditions, the unsearchable riches of Christ.

V

It is worthy of all acceptation! It is worthy! It is worthy of your acceptance, your Majesty, for this proclamation craves no patronage! It is worthy of your acceptance , your Excellency, your Grace, my Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen all, for the gospel asks no favors! It is worthy, worthy, worthy of the acceptance of you all! Hugh Latimer stood before kings and courtiers, and declared that this is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Never once did he forget the dignity of his message: it was faithful; it was worthy in its own right of the acceptance of the lordiest; and he himself staked his life upon it at the last!

VI

Dr. Archibald Alexander of Princeton, was for sixty years a minister of Christ; and for forty of those years, he was a Professor of Divinity. No man in America was more revered or beloved. He died on October 22, 1851. As he lay dying, he was heard by a friend to say, “All my theology is reduced to a narrow compass: This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”

In life and in death, Hugh Latimer was of pretty much the same mind.

edited and excerpted from Frank Boreham’s Life Verses.

The current formatting and editing is copyrighted by Jim Ehrhard, 1999. You are permitted to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that: (1) you credit the author; (2) any modifications are clearly marked; (3) you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction; and (4) you do not make more than 100 copies without permission. If you would like to post this material to your web site or make any use other than as defined above, please contact Teaching Resources International

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Frank Boreham was a pastor in New Zealand and Australia in the late 1800s and early 1900s. One Sunday evening, he began a series of sermons entitled, “Texts That Made History.” He began that first Sunday with “Martin Luther’s Text,” and continued the series for 125 Sundays!

This article deals with Charles Spurgeon’s text. Spurgeon was perhaps the greatest preacher of the nineteenth century. Through his ministry, many thousands were led to Christ and hundreds of preachers were trained for the gospel ministry. Boreham’s message here focuses on the text used in Spurgeon’s conversion.

I

SNOW! Snow! Snow!

It was the first Sunday of the New Year, and this was how it opened! On roads and footpaths the snow was already many inches deep; the fields were a sheet of blinding whiteness; and the flakes were still falling as though they never meant to stop. As the caretaker fought his way through the storm from his cottage to the chapel in Artillery Street, he wondered whether, on such a wild and wintry day, anyone would venture out. It would be strange if, on the very first Sunday morning of the year, there should be no service. He unbolted the chapel doors and lit the furnace under the stove.

Half an hour later, two men were seen bravely trudging their way through the snowdrifts; and, as they stood on the chapel steps, their faces flushed with their recent exertions, they laughingly shook the snow from off their hats and overcoats. What a morning, to be sure! By eleven o’clock about a dozen others had arrived; but where was the minister? They waited; but he did not come. He lived at a distance, and, in all probability, had found the roads impassable.

What was to be done? The stewards looked at each other and surveyed the congregation. Except for a boy of fifteen sitting under the gallery, every face was known to them, and the range of selection was not great. There were whisperings and hasty consultations, and at last one of the two men who were first to arrive — “a poor, thin-looking man, a shoemaker, a tailor, or something of that sort” — yielded to the murmured entreaties of the others and mounted the pulpit steps. He glanced nervously round upon nearly three hundred empty seats. Nearly, but not quite! For there were a dozen or fifteen of the regular worshippers present, and there was the boy sitting under the gallery. People who had braved such a morning deserved all the help that he could give them, and the strange boy under the gallery ought not to be sent back into the storm feeling that there was nothing in the service for him. And so the preacher determined to make the most of his opportunity; and he did.

The boy sitting under the gallery! A marble tablet now adorns the wall near the seat which he occupied that snowy day. The inscription records that, that very morning, the boy sitting under the gallery was converted! He was only fifteen, and he died at fifty-seven. But, in the course of the intervening years, he preached the gospel to millions and led thousands and thousands into the kingdom and service of Jesus Christ. “Let preachers study this story!” says Sir William Robertson Nicoll. “Let them believe that, under the most adverse circumstances, they may do a work that will tell on the universe for ever. It was a great thing to have converted Charles Haddon Spurgeon; and who knows but he may have in the smallest and humblest congregation in the world some lad as well worth converting as was he?”

II

Snow! Snow! Snow!

The boy sitting under the gallery had purposed attending quite another place of worship that Sunday morning. No thought of the little chapel in Artillery Street occurred to him as he strode out into the storm. Not that he was very particular. Ever since he was ten years of age he had felt restless and ill at ease whenever his mind turned to the things that are unseen and eternal. “I had been about five years in the most fearful distress of mind,” he says. “I thought the sun was blotted out of my sky, that I had so sinned against God that there was no hope for me!” He prayed, but never had a glimpse of an answer. He attended every place of worship in the town; but no man had a message for a youth who only wanted to know what he must do to be saved.

With the first Sunday of the New Year, he purposed making yet another of these ecclesiastical experiments. But in making his plans he had not reckoned on the ferocity of the storm. “I sometimes think,” he said; years afterwards, “I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair now, had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm on Sunday morning, January 6th, 1850, when I was going to a place of worship. When I could go no further I turned down a court and came to a little Primitive Methodist chapel.” Thus the strange boy sitting under the gallery came to be seen by the impromptu speaker that snowy morning. Thus, as so often happens, a broken program pointed the path of destiny! Who says that two wrongs can never make a right? Let them look at this! The plans at the chapel went wrong; the minister was snowed in. The plans of the boy under the gallery went wrong: the snowstorm shut him off from the church of his choice. Those two wrongs together made one tremendous right; for out of those shattered plans and programs came an event that has incalculably enriched mankind.

III

Snow! Snow! Snow!

And the very snow seemed to mock his misery. It taunted him as he walked to church that morning. Each virgin snowflake as it fluttered before his face and fell at his feet only emphasized the dreadful pollution within. “My original and inward pollution!” he cries with Bunyan; “I was more loathsome in mine own eyes than a toad. Sin and corruption would as naturally bubble out of my heart as water out of a fountain. I thought that every one had a better heart than I had. At the sight of my own vileness I fell deeply into despair.”

These words of Bunyan’s exactly reflect, he tells us, his own secret and spiritual history. And the white, white snow only intensified the agonizing consciousness of defilement. “I counted the estate of everything that God had made far better than this dreadful state of mind was: yea, gladly would I have been in the condition of a dog or a horse; for I knew they had no souls to perish under the weight of sin as mine was like to do.” “Many and many a time,” says Mr. Thomas Spurgeon, “my father told me that, in those early days, he was so storm-tossed and distressed by reason of his sins that he found himself envying the very beasts in the field and the toads by the wayside!” So storm-tossed! The storm that raged around him that January morning was in perfect keeping with the storm within; but oh, for the whiteness, the pure, unsullied whiteness, of the failing snow!

IV

Snow! Snow! Snow!

From out of that taunting panorama of purity the boy passed into the cavernous gloom of the almost empty building. Its leaden heaviness matched the mood of his spirit, and he stole furtively to a seat under the gallery. He noticed the long pause; the anxious glances which the stewards exchanged with each other; and, a little later, the whispered consultations. He watched curiously as the hastily-appointed preacher — “a shoemaker or something of that sort” — awkwardly ascended the pulpit. “The man was,” Mr. Spurgeon tells us, “really stupid as you would say. He was obliged to stick to his text for the simple reason that he had nothing else to say. His text was, “Look unto Me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in the text, and I listened as though my life depended upon what I heard. In about ten minutes the preacher had got to the end of his tether.

Then he saw me sitting under the gallery; and I dare say, with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger. He then said: “Young man, you look very miserable.” Well, I did; but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance. However, it was a good blow, well struck. He continued: “And you will always be miserable — miserable in life, and miserable in death — if you do not obey my text. But if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved!” Then he shouted, as only a Primitive Methodist can shout, “Young man, look to Jesus! look, look, look!”

I did; and, then and there, the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun! I could have risen on the instant and sung with the most enthusiastic of them of the precious blood of Christ and of the simple faith which looks alone to Him. Oh, that somebody had told me before! In their own earnest way, they sang a Hallelujah before they went home, and I joined in it!”

The snow around!

The defilement within!

“Look unto Me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth!”

“Precious blood . . . and simple faith!”

“I sang a Hallelujah!”

V

Snow! Snow! Snow!

The snow was failing as fast as ever when the boy sitting under the gallery rose and left the building. The storm raged just as fiercely. And yet the snow was not the same snow! Everything was changed.

Mr. Moody has told us that, on the day of his conversion, all the birds in the hedgerow seemed to be singing newer and blither songs. Dr. G. Campbell Morgan declares that the very leaves on the trees appeared to him more beautiful on the day that witnessed the greatest spiritual crisis in his career. “I was now so taken with the love of God,” says Bunyan — and here again Mr. Spurgeon says that the words might have been his own — “I was now so taken with the love and mercy of God that I could not tell how to contain till I got home. I thought I could have spoken of His love, and told of His mercy, even to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed lands before me, had they been capable of understanding me.”

As the boy from under the gallery walked home that morning he laughed at the storm, and the snow that had mocked him coming sang to him as he returned. “The snow was lying deep,” he says, “and more was falling. But those words of David kept ringing through my heart, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow!” It seemed to me as if all Nature was in accord with the blessed deliverance from sin which I had found in a moment by looking to Jesus Christ!”

“I was now so taken with the love of God,” says Bunyan — and here again Mr. Spurgeon says that the words might have been his own — “I was now so taken with the love and mercy of God that I could not tell how to contain till I got home. I thought I could have spoken of His love, and told of His mercy, even to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed lands before me, had they been capable of understanding me.”

As the boy from under the gallery walked home that morning he laughed at the storm, and the snow that had mocked him coming sang to him as he returned. “The snow was lying deep,” he says, “and more was falling. But those words of David kept ringing through my heart, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow!” It seemed to me as if all Nature was in accord with the blessed deliverance from sin which I had found in a moment by looking to Jesus Christ!”

Whiter than snow! Whiter than the snow!

Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow!

VI

Look unto me and be ye saved!

Look! Look! Look!

I look to my doctor to heal me when I am hurt; I look to my lawyer to advise me when I am perplexed; I look to my tradesman to bring me my daily supplies to my door; but there is only One to whom I can look when my soul cries out for deliverance.

Look unto me and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth!

“Look! Look! Look!” cried the preacher.

“I looked ,” says Mr. Spurgeon, “until I could almost have looked my eyes away; and in heaven I will look still, in joy unutterable!”

Happily the preacher, however unlettered, who knowing little else, knows how to direct such wistful and hungry eyes to the only possible fountain of satisfaction!

Edited and excerpted from Frank Boreham’s Life Verses.

The current formatting and editing is copyrighted by Jim Ehrhard, 1999. You are permitted to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that: (1) you credit the author; (2) any modifications are clearly marked; (3) you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction; and (4) you do not make more than 100 copies without permission. If you would like to post this material to your web site or make any use other than as defined above, please contact Teaching Resources International

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Frank Boreham was a pastor in New Zealand and Australia in the late 1800s and early 1900s. One Sunday evening, he began a series of sermons entitled, “Texts That Made History.” He began that first Sunday with “Martin Luther’s Text,” and continued the series for 125 Sundays!

This article deals with Hudson Taylor’s text. Taylor was a pioneering missionary to inland China and founder of the China Inland Mission in 1865.

The day on which James Hudson Taylor–then a boy in his teens–found himself confronted by that tremendous text was, as he himself testified in old age, “a day that he could never forget.” It is a day that China can never forget; a day that the world can never forget. It was a holiday; everybody was away from home; and the boy found time hanging heavily upon his hands.

In an aimless way he wandered, during the afternoon, into his father’s library, and poked about among the shelves. “I tried,” he says, “to find some book with which to while away the leaden hours. Nothing attracting me, I turned over a basket of pamphlets and selected from among them a tract that looked interesting. I knew that it would have a story at the commencement and a moral at the close; but I promised myself that I would enjoy the story and leave the rest. It would be easy to put away the tract as soon as it should seem prosy.”

He scampers off to the stable loft, throws himself on the hay, and plunges into the book. He is captivated by the narrative, and finds it impossible to drop the book when the story comes to an end. He reads on and on. He is rewarded by one great golden word whose significance he has never before discovered: “The Finished Work of Christ!” The theme entrances him; and at last he only rises from his bed in the soft hay that he may kneel on the hard floor of the loft and surrender his young life to the Savior who had surrendered everything for him. If, he asked himself, as he lay upon the hay, if the whole work was finished, and the whole debt paid upon the Cross, what is there left for me to do? “And then,” he tells us, “there dawned upon me the joyous conviction that there was nothing in the world to be done but to fall upon my knees, accept the Savior and praise Him for evermore.”

“It is finished!” “When Jesus, therefore, had received the vinegar he said, “It is finished!” and He bowed His head and gave up the ghost.”

“Then there dawned upon me the joyous conviction that, since the whole work was finished and the whole debt paid upon the Cross, there was nothing for me to do but to fall upon my knees, accept the Savior and praise Him for evermore!”

“It is finished!” It is really only one word: the greatest word ever uttered; we must examine it for a moment as a lapidary examines under a powerful glass a rare and costly gem.

It was a farmer’s word. When, into his herd, there was born an animal so beautiful and shapely that it seemed absolutely destitute of faults and defects, the farmer gazed upon the creature with proud, delighted eyes. “Tetelestai!” he said, “tetelestai!”

It was an artist’s word. When the painter or the sculptor had put the last finishing touches to the vivid landscape or the marble bust, he would stand back a few feet to admire his masterpiece, and, seeing in it nothing that called for correction or improvement, would murmur fondly, “Tetelestai! tetelestai!”

It was a priestly word. When some devout worshiper, overflowing with gratitude for mercies shown him, brought to the temple a lamb without spot or blemish, the pride of the whole flock, the priest, more accustomed to seeing the blind and defective animals led to the altar, would look admiringly upon the pretty creature. “Tetelestai!” he would say, “tetelestai!” And when, in the fullness of time, the Lamb of God offered Himself on the altar of the ages, he rejoiced with a joy so triumphant that it bore down all His anguish before it. The sacrifice was stainless, perfect, finished! “He cried with a loud voice, ‘Tetelestai!’ and gave up the ghost.”

This divine self-satisfaction appears only twice, once in each Testament. When He completed the work of Creation, He looked upon it and said that it was very good; when He completed the work of redemption, He cried with a loud voice, “Tetelestai!” It means exactly the same thing.

In his own narrative of his conversion, Hudson Taylor quotes James Proctor’s well-known hymn: that hymn that, in one of his essays, Froude criticizes so severely:

Nothing either great or small,

Nothing, sinner, no;

Jesus did it, did it all,

Long, long ago.

“It is Finished!” yes, indeed,

Finished every jot;

Sinner, this is all you need;

Tell me, is it not?

Cast your deadly doing down,

Down at Jesus’ feet;

Stand in Him, in Him alone,

Gloriously complete.

Froude maintains that these verses are immoral. It is only by “doing,” he argues, that the work of the world can ever get done. And if you describe “doing” as “deadly” you set a premium upon indolence and lessen the probabilities of attainment. The best answer to Froude’s plausible contention is The Life of Hudson Taylor. Hudson Taylor became convinced, as a boy, that “the whole work was finished and the whole debt paid.” “There is nothing for me to do,” he says, “but to fall down on my knees and accept the Savior.” The chapter in his biography that tells of this spiritual crisis is entitled “The Finished Work of Christ,” and it is headed by the quotation:

Upon a life I did not live,

Upon a death I did not die,

Another’s life, Another’s death

I stake my whole eternity.

And, as I have said, the very words that Froude so bitterly condemns are quoted by Hudson Taylor as a reflection of his own experience. And the result? The result is that Hudson Taylor became one of the most prodigious toilers of all time. So far from his trust in “The Finished Work of Christ” inclining him to indolence, he felt that he must toil most terribly to make so perfect a Savior known to the whole wide world. There lies on my desk a Birthday Book which I very highly value. It was given me at the docks by Mr. Thomas Spurgeon as I was leaving England. If you open it at the twenty-first of May you will find these words: “‘Simply to Thy Cross I cling’ is but half of the Gospel. No one is really clinging to the Cross who is not at the same time faithfully following Christ and doing whatsoever He commands;” and against those words of Dr. J. R. Miller’s in my Birthday Book, you may see the autograph of J. Hudson Taylor. He was our guest at the Mosgiel Manse when he set his signature to those striking and significant sentences.

“We Build Like Giants; We Finish Like Jewelers!”–so the old Egyptians wrote over the portals of their palaces and temples. I like to think that the most gigantic task ever attempted on this planet–the work of the world’s redemption–was finished with a precision and a nicety that no jeweler could rival.

“It is finished!” He cried from the cross.

“Tetelestai! Tetelestai!”

When He looked upon His work in Creation and saw that it was good, He placed it beyond the power of man to improve upon it.

To gild refine’d gold, to paint the lily,

To throw a perfume on the violet,

To smooth the ice, or add another hue

Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,

Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

And, similarly, when He looked upon His work in redemption and cried triumphantly, “Tetelestai!” He placed it beyond the power of any man to add to it. There are times when any addition is a subtraction. Some years ago, White House at Washington–the residence of the American Presidents–was in the hands of the painters and decorators. Two large entrance doors had been painted to represent black walnut. The contractor ordered his men to scrape and clean them in readiness for repainting, and they set to work. But when their knives penetrated to the solid timber, they discovered to their astonishment that it was heavy mahogany of a most exquisite natural grain! The work of that earlier decorator, so far from adding to the beauty of the timber, had only served to conceal its essential and inherent glory. It is easy enough to add to the wonders of creation or of redemption; but you can never add without subtracting. “It is finished!”

Many years ago, Ebenezer Wooton, an earnest but eccentric evangelist, was conducting a series of summer evening services on the village green at Lidford Brook. The last meeting had been held; the crowd was melting slowly away; and the evangelist was engaged in taking down the marquee. All at once a young fellow approached him and asked, casually rather than earnestly, “Mr. Wooton, what must I do to be saved?” The preacher took the measure of his man. “Too late!” he said, in a matter of fact kind of way, glancing up from a somewhat obstinate tentpeg with which he was struggling.

“Too late, my friend, too late!” The young fellow was startled.

“Oh, don’t say that, Mr. Wooton!” he pleaded, a new note coming into his voice. “Surely it isn’t too late just because the meetings are over?” “Yes, my friend,” exclaimed the evangelist, dropping the cord in his hand, straightening himself up, and looking right into the face of his questioner, “it’s too late! You want to know what you must do to be saved, and I tell you that you’re hundreds of years too late! The work of salvation is done, completed, finished! It was finished on the cross; Jesus said so with the last breath that He drew! What more do you want?” And, then and there, it dawned upon the now earnest inquirer on the village green as, at about the same time, it dawned upon young Hudson Taylor in the hay-loft, that “since the whole work was finished and the whole debt paid upon the cross, there was nothing for him to do but to fall upon his knees and accept the Savior.” And there, under the elms, the sentinel stars witnessing the great transaction, he kneeled in glad thanksgiving and rested his soul for time and for eternity on “The Finished Work of Christ.”

“The Finished Work of Christ!”

“Tetelestai! Tetelestai!”

“It is finished!”

It is not a sigh of relief at having reached the end of things. It is the unutterable joy of the artist who, putting the last touches to the picture that has engrossed him for so long, sees in it the realization of all his dreams and can nowhere find room for improvement. Only once in the world’s history did a finishing touch bring a work to absolute perfection; and on that day of days a single flaw would have shattered the hope of the ages.

This article does not contain the complete essay by Frank Boreham. Much has been edited for space. Also, many spellings have been changed to conform to American style. For the original, see a recent reprint by Kregel entitled Life Verses: The Bible’s Impact on Famous Lives, Vol. 2, pp. 102-112

The current formatting and editing is copyrighted by Jim Ehrhard, 1999. You are permitted to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that: (1) you credit the author; (2) any modifications are clearly marked; (3) you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction; and (4) you do not make more than 100 copies without permission. If you would like to post this material to your web site or make any use other than as defined above, please contact Teaching Resources International

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